Bike Lane Backlash on Grand Street: Councilman Blasts DOT

I live just off Grand Street at Mulberry, and I can tell you that traffic was a mess well before the lane. The spillover from Ferrara alone is enough to snarl traffic on many nights. Not to mention that there are always limousines and tour buses stopping or double parked on Grand all night every night. Many evenings its all I can do to maneuver my bike through the morass of stalled cars.

What I have noticed changing since the bike lane, though, is that the Little Italy merchants are becoming increasingly hostile to cyclists. It's now gotten to the point that I now feel uncomfortable walking my bike into my own building. I've been sneered at or outright castigated by restaurant staff several times for walking my bike on Mulberry street, despite the fact that I literally have no other choice: it's a one way street and cars are allowed to park on both sides.

Bloomberg, the bike lanes are a big step in the right direction, but as a city and as a culture, we still have a long way to go.

The bike lane is great! I use it to commute to work and no longer have to fear for my life when riding on Grand Street. I think that there is a small minority of businesses and residents complaining here and they are receiving too much coverage. If anything I frequent local businesses more because of the lane.

thats a good traffic reform from Mr. Gerson.

visit his other reforms : http://www.gerson2009.com/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpContent&htmlKey=issues&s=gerson

vote for Mr.Gerson for district 1 council election!!!!!

"It’s time the city licensed bikes so they can track offenders." Great idea. Let's see, $100 a bike per year time 1,000 bikes equals a $100,000 plus fines for bikes not properly "parked" at $25 per. Oops plus $30 for bike riding license. We are starting to talk some serious money here gang.

More hilarity in this article:

http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2009/05/followup-transportation-town-hall.html

Of course, Streetsblog (yeah, I know) actually looked up the truth:

A quick CrashStat check reveals that, contrary to Mr. Jacob's gut assertion, several people have been killed by autos while walking on Grand Street in recent years.

Bike lanes dont create traffic, cars create traffic. When people break the law, they should be ticketed. We don't have to have registrations for our bikes but a cyclist should be held responsible for their actions much like a driver. It goes both ways.

There needs to be mandatory registration for assholes in this city... Break the law (subject to City Council Approval of course) three times and you are gone—off to Phoenix or Sacramento. There will be plenty of room for cars and bikes once all of the assholes are gone. Until that happens we must share space with too many assholes.

How do bike lanes make this city more like the suburbs?

Last time I checked, Portland and Amsterdam are not suburbs, they are cities.

People who insist on driving everywhere are what makes this city more like the suburbs.

yeah ! thats right - Take the f@#&*%! Train. Or move to Florida- drive to the bathroom & get Fat like everyone there.

Let's face it. You have a DOT hijacked by Transportation Alternatives, a group of cycling fanatics who disdain not only motorists, but even us pedestrians who get in their way.

It doesn't help that the DOT Diktator Sadik-Khan rides a bike for photo ops but hypocritically uses a limo paid by taxpayers to chauffeur her around the rest of the time.

Further DOT hypocrisy is evidenced when DOT limits street parking for the rest of NY but has Reserved Parking spaces for its employees. We ride the subway; they drive. What a bunch of phonies.

Most of the TransAlt fanatics are newbies to Gotham who want to turn the Greatest City in the World to the suburbia they fled from. NY ain't Portland! You want to emulate Amsterdam? Then move there.

When will Bloomberg listen to the pleas of the besieged neighborhood residents and businesses that are harmed by Czar Sadik-Khan's looney experiments and dump this hippy and her Spandex Nazis?

Transportation Alternatives is a radical fundamentalist organization and should be regarded as such. The DOT entertaining their rhetoric is akin to negotiating with terrorists.

What the hell? Cars get 99.99% of all the roads and we get like 5 bike lanes on some streets and car owners complain about that? It's like a white plantation owner complaining that slaves get too much water to drink.

Most of the TransAlt fanatics are newbies to Gotham who want to turn the Greatest City in the World to the suburbia they fled from.

lol what are you even talking about? you can't expect people to take you seriously with that kind of sensationalism, contradictory logic, etc.

I respect your point of view that some of the DOT might be catering too directly to bikes, but you've gotta relax. Heck, I ride a bike a lot and I might even agree with you - especially about the hypocrisy of the agency.

I don't really give a shit about most bike lanes, either; they don't solve the real problems we have.

Never. Now bend over, the DOT Nazis have plans for a class 2 buffered bike lane right up your asshole.

If you check out Sean S's youtube videos of traffic issues along the Grand Street bike lane, you will see that many of them are cause by vehicles illegally parked in the buffer zone for the lane near intersections. This makes turning for longer vehicles more difficult. If tickets were handed out more quickly for blocking the buffer at the start of the street, less tie ups would occur.

this is exactly right. and babyhitler's point stands, as well.

why not start with more enforcement of the existing safety rules? Keeping cars out of No Parking areas would be a good place to start.

it's much easier for a bicyclist to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle than a parked car with no driver to be seen.

don't they ban cars on Grand in the summer months or was that Mulberry. so banning cars has been done before.

Pitt Street????? that's old school LES.

as a cyclist myself i can admit that some of us are definitely assholes. can drivers please just admit the same thing?

on another note, i am curious to see if the city will one day do something revolutionary and simply close a street like grand to traffic expect deliveries and such things before 8am and after 6pm. just an idea

Closing a street to cars? That be crazy talk! Civilizations will crumble!

Or people will quickly realize it's no big deal at all. As has been the case in many European cities for a long time now.

one solution is just to ban cars on grand street. They complain about how hard it is to move a fire truck. Guess what? when they were illegally double parking daily before the bike lane it was hard to move a fire truck. suck some eggs.

license bike riders, mandatory registration of bikes.

you know, because that will make motor vehicular traffic way better.

exactly. they ought to start with substantial penalties for the drivers who are actually makings things less safe.